1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a welding apparatus and a welding method. Specifically, the present invention relates to a welding apparatus and a welding method of welding a housing of a vehicle lamp and a transparent cover, in which the apparatus is structured at a low cost and a welding work can be performed in a short time.
2. Related Art
There is a method of joining a housing of a vehicle lamp and a transparent cover by welding, by applying laser beams through the transparent cover to the housing so as to weld the housing and the transparent cover.
However, in a scan type in which a laser gun is moved along a welding line by use of a robot thereby to perform welding, a machining time becomes long, so that there is a problem that efficiency is bad.
Further, in a so-called flash type in which many laser guns are arranged over a full length of the welding line and perform welding simultaneously in order to shorten the machining time and increase the efficiency, the machining time can be reduced. However, the immense cost of equipment is required, which causes a problem of the increase of the vehicle lamp cost.